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Promotion Tip:
Search Engine Promotion Checklist
by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.
Some webmasters think Web promotion is simple: just submit the site to search engines and wait for the customers to visit. But that approach considers promotion at the end of the Web design process, instead where it belongs - at the beginning. A successful search engine promotion strategy begins with your source code.
Our promotion checklist highlights ten important components of a successful Web site. This month's Webmaster Tips issue also contains handy, annotated checklists that address other important areas:
- Do your homework. Search engines are more vigilant than ever about banning spam sites. The seemingly innocent choice of domain name or Web host could doom your site from the beginning. Make sure that you aren't using a domain name with a bad history in the search engine world. Spammers often buy names and use them until they're banned from the search engines. Then they dump the names and move on.
- Check your domain name's history at the WayBack machine and make sure that spammers have never used it. If the name was ever used for an adult or gambling site, choose another name.
- Review your host's terms of service. Since virtual hosting accounts use a shared IP address, make sure your Web hosting company doesn't allow spam sites on their servers. You could be banned simply for moving into a bad Internet neighborhood!
- Correct all HTML code. Errors can hurt search engine promotion and turn away human visitors. Even a simple coding error can hide important page content from search engine spiders. Coding errors may also break page layout in some browsers. Valid HTML code matters far more than most people realize!
- Evaluate your site with HTML Toolbox and correct errors before submitting the site.
- Place TITLE and META tags on all pages. A common mistake is to create TITLE and META tags for the home page and then copy them on every other page. But the TITLE tag is extremely important to site promotion and the META description tag is key to looking good in search results.
- Unique TITLE and META tags for every page. Make sure they describe the actual page content.
- Page content that reflects the META keywords list. If you've listed a keyword in the META tag, make sure that word or phrase is actually used on the page!
- A good, compelling description. This encourages visitors to click on your site in the search results page.
NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack tool has a TITLE and META tag generator. It's an easy way to create optimized tags for all your Web pages.
- Use keywords effectively. Keywords are the words and phrases that you expect visitors to type into search engines to find your site. Optimize individual pages for particular keywords and use them in the page content.
- Create a good directory structure and descriptive file names. Most search engines try to index every page in a Web site, but it's better to be safe than sorry! Keep your most important content as high as possible in your directory structure - always within 3 levels of the top-level directory.
- Most important content pages reside in the top-level directory.
- No splash page unless absolutely required.
- Descriptive directory names that include keywords.
- Descriptive HTML file names that include keywords.
- Descriptive image files names that include keywords.
- Remove extra code. Replace lengthy JavaScript functions and CSS definitions with calls to external files. This moves important page content to the top of the page, makes maintenance easier, and decreases page file size.
- External CSS file linked to all pages that use styles.
- External JavaScript file linked to all pages that use JavaScript functions.
- Minimal use of FONT and other deprecated formatting tags to reduce page file size.
- Be careful with dynamic URLs and frames. Dynamic pages are created as a result of user input (like entering a query into a search box). Search engine spiders can't input queries so they generally can't access dynamic content - unless you make it happen. Refer to our two newsletter articles about dynamic pages for more specific information: "Deep Submit Dynamic Pages and "Invite Search Engine Spiders Into Your Dynamic Site" for more information.
Framed sites also present a problem because an individual page may be indexed outside its frame and lack navigation or other important page elements.
- Static HTML pages that duplicate important dynamic content or link directly to dynamic pages.
- Modified dynamic URLs that mimic static page structure.
- NOFRAMES tag included on all framed pages.
- Plan for out-of-context frames.
- Generate a site map. A text-based site map is particularly important for sites that use some sort of dynamic menu system because spiders may have difficulty following links inside JavaScript menus, Flash files, or applets.
- Every page contains a text link to the site map.
- Site map is constantly updated to reflect Web site changes.
- Verify your robots.txt file. A search engine spider is also called a "robot" and it relies on the robots.txt file to list pages that are ok to crawl. Write your own or use Web Tool Central's Robots.txt File Generator. Learn more about robots.txt files at Web Developer's Journal.
- Create a robots.txt file (if you haven't already).
- Verify that you haven't "disallowed" any important pages or blocked important robots (like Google's Googlebot).
- Avoid spammer tricks! Search engine algorithms are wise to many spammer tricks and easily detect them. Your site rank may be penalized or you may just get ejected from the index.
- No hidden text
- No keyword stuffing
- Stay out of link farms
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NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack's Page Primer tool will analyze your page and warn you about even more questionable design techniques and problems with text content.
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